Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1887-02-24

I This brings us by very natural
transition to the ethical implications of
the law of habit. They are numerous
and momentons. DIR. Carpenter, from
whose ..Mental Physiology" we have
quoted, has so prominently enforced
the principle that our organs grow to
the way in which they have been ex-
ercised, and dwelt upon it's conse-
quences, that his book almost deserves
to be called work of edification, on
this account alone, We need make no
apology, then, for tracing a few OF
these consequences ourselves:
Habit a second naturei Habit is
ten times nature. the, Duke of Well
ington is said to have exclaimed; and
the degree, to which this is true no one
can probably appreciate as well as one
who is vet iraii soldier himself. The
daily. drill aud the years of discipline
end by fashioning man completely
uver,again, rs to most of the POSSIBLE
ties Of his conduct. There is a story,
which is credible enough, though it
may not be true, Of practical joker,
who, seeing a discharged veteran car
rying home his dinner, suddenly called
out. ..AttentiQn!' whercupon the man
instantly brought his hands down, and
lost his mutton and potatoes in the
gutter. The drill had been thorough,
and its effects had become embodied in
the mans nervous structure"
Riderless cavalry horses, at many a
battle. have been seen to come to-
gether and go through their customary
evolutions at the sound of the bugie-
call. Most trained domestic animals,
dogs. and oxen, and omnibus and car
horses, seem to be machines almost
pure and simple, undoubtingly, UNI
hesitatingly doing from minute to
minute the duties they have been
taught. and giving no sign that the
possibility of an alternative ever sug-
gests itself to their mind. Men grown
old in, prison have asked to he read
mitted after being once set free. In a
railroad accident to travelling men,
agerie in the United States some time
in 1884, a tiger, whose cage had
broken open, is said to have emerged.
but presently crept back. again, as if
too much bcwildered by his new re-
sponsibilities, so that he was without
difficulty secured.
Habit is thus the enormous fiy-wheel
of society. its most precious conserva-
tive agent. II alone il what keeps us
all within the bounds Of ordinance, and
saves the children of fortune from the
envious uprisings Of the poor. 1t
alone prevents the hardest and most
repulsive walks, of life from being de-
serted by those brought. up to tread
therein. 1t keeps the fisherman and
the deck-hand at sea through the
winter; it holds the miner in his dark
ness, and nails the countryman to his
log-cabin and his lonely farm through
all the months of snow; it protects us
from invasion by the natives of the
desert and the frozen zone. 1t dooms
US all to fight out the battle of life
upon the lines OF our nurture or our
early choice, and TO make the best of a
pursuit that disagrees, because there is
no other for which we are fitted, and
it is too late to begin again. 1t keeps
different social strata from mixing.
Already at the age of twenty-five you
see the professional mannerism settling
down on the young commercial travel
err, on the young doctor, on the young
minister, on the young counselor-at-
law. You see the little lines of cicay-
age running through tho character, the
tricks. of thought, the pi'ejudiccs, the
ways of the ''shop" in q word, from
which the man can by and by no more
escape than his coat-slceve can sudden
~ fall into new set Of folds. On the
whole, it is best he should not escape.
/: is we'll for the world that in most u
us, by the age Of thirty, the charactet
has set Ike plaster, and will never
soften agslin. Professor William James.
in Popular Science Monthly.